Tempest Heart - Paula Quinn Page 0,10
or laugh. “Askin’ questions.”
“Well!” She let go of his wrist and pulled his plaid tighter around her. “Now, what were we talking about?” He had diverted her attention away from her question. “Oh, aye, tell me something about yourself, sir.”
“Nae.”
She gave him a little glare. He really was infuriating. If he hadn’t saved her life and she wasn’t so happy to be alive today, she would not speak to him for a few hours.
“We will have to get another horse fer ye,” he told her. “This boy shouldna carry both of us fer too long.”
He didn’t want to sit with her anymore. She looked down at his arms on either side of her, loosely holding her and the reins. He didn’t want to be friends with her. Why not? Did she want to be friends with him? A killer?
“How will you kill Walters, the governor?”
“Why would ye want to know that?”
“Because there is not much else to talk about! You refuse to talk about so many things!”
“Why are ye shoutin’?”
“Oh, no. You will not divert my attention again! Tell me how you will kill the governor.”
He said nothing for an eternal moment. She feared he would deny her. Then what would she do?
“Most likely, I will come up from behind him and slice his throat with one of my blades. ’Tis the only way I can be sure of his death.”
She shivered in his arms. “What about mercy? Do you ever grant it?
“Nae. Once I have a name, he will die.”
Chilling. She didn’t like thinking of him as a merciless murderer. “You say you only kill very bad men.”
“Aye. They are powerful men who will never see justice while they live.”
“But what about the afterlife?”
He shrugged. “That is between them and God. My duty is to get them there faster.”
“What made you want to kill people?”
He stared at her for a moment as if he could not believe she asked such a question, or that she was still asking them.
“Woman, why d’ye want to know all these things aboot me?”
She gave him a look just as incredulous as his. “Why do you insist on being so secretive? Do you think I would ever hand you over to anyone after what you did for me? I am indebted to you, sir. I pray that you never know what you saved me from. My father saved me the first time, but he is many leagues away. I have no one else. They would have lit up my skirts and my legs would have been burned again, but this time it would not have stopped.” She began to cry and covered her face in her hands. It took him a moment or two, as if he didn’t know what to do about a crying woman. Captain Harper, her father’s second-in-command had always told her that most times when his wife Mary cried, she felt better after an embrace.
Rose waited but no embrace came.
“If that were not enough,” she continued on a sob, looking up at him again, “you took care of me and gave me your tea.”
He muttered something unintelligible. Then he said, “I would have ye cease cryin’, Rose. It makes me feel…” he chewed on the word and scowled at her for all he was worth “…helpless.”
She sniffed and smiled back. “I will try.” She wiped her eyes and snuggled closer to him. He was warmer than the sun. “I just want to get to know you, perhaps be friends.”
He sighed and shook his head. Her gaze slipped to his naturally sulky mouth, about to speak, about to tell her no. She could see it in his eyes, regret and resolve fighting for preeminence. But either way, he was about to reject her.
“Please,” she said softly, “is it the questions? Something else I have said or done? I am unaccustomed to speaking to people. I’m afraid I do not know what is acceptable and what is not.”
His eyes were brilliant cut emeralds beneath his raven brows while he looked her over. “Were ye secluded?”
“Aye, but ’twas for my own protection. My father was correct. But I fear once he knows it, I will never see the light of day again.”
He made a face like a stinkbug just flew down his throat. “What happened that makes yer father so determined to protect ye?”
“Someone lit our house on fire when I was a child. That is how I was burned. I was in the house alone. One of my father’s servants tried to